two sides of the same coin
by bubblegum days
Summary: Robbie is mostly selfish. Trina is mostly selfish. She smiled at him while he made her coffee. Surely, this isn't going to end well. Also, everyone had a fight and talks through Robbie. Trina/Robbie, Cat/Jade/Beck/Tori/Andre love pentagon. In that order
1. push to close

**A/N: **I have previously done a fic with these prompt styles, but I've decided to take this one in a different direction. All the chapters will start with prompts, but it will all be within the same continuity. I have a rough outline of how things will go, but the events will fall into place by the hands of the 17 prompts. Also, I love coffee shops. They're the perfect place for cliche, overly cynical teenagers to work in.

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><p>chapter one<p>

_1000 words. character study. push to close._

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><p>He worked in a coffee shop called <em>Rico's. <em>The coffee was good, but not excellent and he couldn't tell you what the pastries tasted like because of his gluten allergy, but nothing about this place was the best. He would lean over the counter, which was a slightly feminine habit in itself, and observe the small gaggle of customers when he was on slow shifts. He saw a lot of people trying too hard to be obscure, wearing scarves and shooting straight black coffee down like it was their life force as they worked on laptops. He saw businessmen who obviously had no time for the bustle of busy chains like Starbucks rush in and out, a hurricane of briefcases and well-shined shoes. Lastly, he saw everyday people who just didn't want to pay a lot of money for a pick-me-up.

Today, he found himself pouring the whipped cream on top of a coffee for a frazzled looking woman clutching a screaming toddler in her arms. When they exchanged product and money he gave her a sympathetic look, though the sour one she returned made her seem less than pleased with her sympathy. He guessed she was one of those mothers who thought that every painstaking moment of parenthood was a blessing.

Unable to leave the counter, for he was covering his hungover co-worker's shift, he found himself bored. He rubbed his glasses clean on the bottom of his apron and wondered briefly if it was even sanitary. He eyed cream-filled lumps of dough with envy. If it wasn't for his slightly severe allergy to gluten and various other unimportant things like kumquats, he would be _huge_. In his rare encounters with gluten he found the taste of sugar under his tongue quite nice, the way that pastries would melt in his mouth desirable. However, it always left him feeling like somebody lit a fire in his belly and, on bad occasions, a small trip to the hospital. But alas, he had to follow a strict and also Kosher diet, leaving him skinny. Not even the good type of skinny, either.

He sighed once more and began to drum his fingers on the counter. This was not his preferred job, but one of the many stipulations for his mother returning home was that he find one. He had been walking in this part of town with Beck, talking about Tori's cheekbones of all things, when he saw the _Help Wanted _sign in the window. He had grabbed Beck's arm, which had been unusually soft for he was wearing only a tank top, having given a shivering Robbie his flannel shirt earlier, and pulled him towards the window. He quickly explained his situation and was met with a shake of the head and a simple "Robbie, that's sort of a little _fucked up_," but nonetheless they had filled out applications and both gotten a job at Rico's within the hour. It was a new franchise, just testing the water of the coffee shop business. The titular owner Rico was a tall, thin man with very curly brown hair and beautiful skin, and he was nice enough and gave them good pay and hours. _And _he paid Robbie double when Robbie had to frequently cover for Beck, though Robbie would just (reluctantly) give Beck his money anyway.

He had been working at this establishment for five months. It was doing well, though there were only a total of seven employees-two junior managers for two shifts, two sets of two employees for two shifts, and Rico, who was there seemingly 24/7. Robbie and Beck covered the afternoon shift, from two until eight, which was just fine with him. They'd met the two people that worked the morning shift, college students who took their classes at night, and Robbie felt bad for them. He reckoned that their shifts must be hectic, seeing as _coffee _and _morning _go together like _school _and _weekday_.

Customers came in steadily over the next few hours, until it was within half an hour of closing. The crowd thinned, only a few people left at the tables and one person lounging on a couch with retro headphones, a doughnut pinched between their lips, eyebrows furrowed and hands hammering the ever-loving anything out of a keyboard. Robbie figured there would only be a few more customers for the rest of the day and began to relax, his clenched back muscles unfurling beneath the polo shirt he wore as part of the unofficial uniform-he thinks that the only person that doesn't follow that is Beck, who just ties an apron around whatever drab outfit he bothered to put on that day-and let out a long breath from his mouth.

His relaxation was cut short by this shift's manager, a burly man named Harold, who decided that this was a great time to clap his heavy hand on Robbie's back. Robbie sputtered and stumbled forward. He could've sworn he heard his spine break in two.

"Good shift today, eh?" Harold said. He had a thick accent, something from the upper east coast, and a deep voice. "Lots of tips. Where's your friend, though, boy?"

"Out sick," Robbie muttered.

Harold took this as enough, told Robbie to straighten his apron and glasses, set him a goal of 5% more speed (_what does that even mean?_) and headed for the back of the shop.

Ten minutes until closing, and the shop was empty. Robbie assumed that that would the rest of the crowd for today, and he already began cleaning up when a familiar face decided that now would be a great time to burst in for coffee.

He made Trina Vega's frothy concoction silently, slightly embarrassed for no apparent reason. He swore, though, that he saw her smile at him when she left. It stuck in his head the whole time while he untied his apron and hung it on a hook, cleaned and closed up for the day, pulling the door behind him.


	2. betrayal, been there, done that

**A/N**: Don't expect an update this fast again. I took the "Write for twenty minutes" to mean plan for twenty minutes, which I did. I find second chapters to be more awkward than first chapters. Beck is a bit OOC, but I swear that has a purpose. There is literally no Trina/Robbie in this chapter-you can ctrl-f _Trina, _take your time, I won't mind-but there is delicious, dramatic subplot. I can assure you that this is a Tribbie story, but for now I'm classyfying this as a CatJadeBeckToriAndre. (Cajackridre?) In that order.

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><p>chapter two<em><br>_

_write for twenty minutes. a male character. betrayal - been there, done that._

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><p>When Robbie got home that night, he quickly changed from work clothes into his regular clothes: his favorite cardigan, jeans, and t-shirt. It was a Saturday night, hovering around 7:30, and he had gotten dinner at his favorite organic restaurant's drive-thru on the way home. He sat down at his dining room table and began his meal by himself. A note by the door told him that his mother had gone out, and his father was still at work.<p>

He needed to call Beck once he finished eating, he thought. He lifted a forkful of salad to his mouth. He was a dainty eater, wiping his lips with a napkin if he felt even the slightest of mess on or around his mouth. Admittedly, this was more out of self-awareness than manners; in his brief experience, he had concluded that girls did _not _like boys who had lettuce hanging from their lips and salad dressing dripping down their chins. The salad was small and did not take long to eat. Once he finished, he tossed the plastic container in the trash and propped himself up on a counter, pulling his cell phone from his pocket to call Beck.

Beck picked up on the fourth ring. "What?" He groaned, traces of sleep still in his voice.

"I just wanted to call to see how you were doing," Robbie said, picking at a piece of lint on his cardigan. "Since you were hungover. _At 2 in the afternoon on a Sunday._"

"Fuck, Mom," Beck laughed. Robbie could hear him roll over in his bed. "I was out late last night, okay? I have some problems."

"Oh," Robbie breathed. When Beck had problems, they were usually serious. "That explains why you texted me at seven in the morning and didn't pick up when I called you. Five times." All of this was true; he received a text saying _cover forr me _at 7:21 a.m. in the morning.

"Yeah."

"What's wrong?"

Beck sighed on the other line. This was alarming. Beck was, mostly, smirks, sarcasm, and no emotion. "Some Jade stuff, some Cat stuff, some Tori stuff, some André stuff. Just stuff. Just _shit, _really, but I know how naughty words hurt your ears."

"Beck, you listed all our friends as problems." Robbie finally freed the piece of lint and flicked it off his fingers. He felt very naked without Rex and nothing to do, but he wouldn't dare wake Rex while Robbie was on the phone. He didn't want to hear the comments Rex would make.

"Yeah, I guess I did. Like I said, problems."

"Want to meet up and talk about them? We could go for _coffee_," he laughed.

"Robbie, you're such a girl."

Beck said it jokingly, but it still hurt. Robbie's grip on his phone loosened and he lowered his head, looking at the patterns in his kitchen title. Robbie was the type of skinny that made his hips tilt in a feminine fashion and that made other, more masculine men call him a _faggot. _Robbie had thought Beck was above that.

"Come on, you know I'm just joking. I have this huge headache. I should be more appreciative of you. You're the only one talking to me. What was this about hanging out?"

The idea of drama piqued Robbie's interest, and the apology definitely soothed him. "Okay. My parents are out, my mom would get mad if I had somebody over-" Beck groaned again- "so I think that we should go to the park." _The park _had different connotations for people than it did for Beck and Robbie. Robbie knew Beck knew that. Anybody could guess, by the way Robbie's voice quivered at the words.

"Yeah, I'd like that," Beck said, softly. He sounded defeated.

"Okay, I'm leaving now." With these words, Robbie took the phone from his ear and pressed the _End _button, watching Beck's smiling face slide off of his screen. He hopped from the counter, grabbed his keys from the rung by his door, and exited his house.

The drive wasn't long, and anticipation made it even shorter. He parked in the parking lot of a drugstore across the street, took the crosswalk over, and entered the playground with slightly shaking hands.

Robbie wandered over towards the swing set and sat on the swing. His hands wrapped around slightly rusted chains and he hung his head low. He rocked himself back and forth with his foot slowly, thinking too much about how when he was seven this swing scared him because it was so high. He also remembered that when he was eleven, he pushed Cat on this swing. Cat had brown hair then, and she laughed even more, if that was possible. But mostly he thinks about that time that he was seven and Beck was fearless and dared Robbie to swing and Robbie was so very scared. (He didn't have Rex to stand up for him, then.)

It was dark outside, but the park is on a corner and there are streetlamps all around. When they were fourteen they would sneak out of their house and come here. When they were fifteen they would sit underneath the slide and get drunk, because Jade lived like two streets down and her parents didn't give a fuck about unexpected visitors. When they were sixteen they did the same thing, except now they could drive and Beck would take Robbie home then go over Jade's alone.

Robbie pushed off suddenly, fiercely. He soared backwards, and kept pushing his legs in and out. His glasses teetered on his nose but he was afraid if he took them off he would slip, fall, and die. He did, however, shed his cardigan, which fell onto the mulch gently. The gray t-shirt he was wearing flapped around his stomach, exposing stretches of pale white skin and the tiniest, faintest trail of hair he had ever laid his eyes on. Soon, on each swing, he was even with the top of the swing set.

"You're going to wrap yourself around it." And thus stood Beck, cool, laid-back Beck, leaning against the slide with his arms folded.

On the next downward swing, Robbie jumped. He felt his heart fly off and come back again, and his leg gave out underneath him.

"Very cool," Beck said.

The swing came back around and hit Robbie in the head. Robbie cried out; Beck laughed. Robbie rubbed his head and looked downwards. Beck stopped laughing.

Deciding that where he was, having fallen from the jump, was good enough, Robbie looked at Beck and then nodded towards the mulch. Beck walked over and sat in front of him, running a hand through his hair. Though his face was emotionless, Robbie could tell something was wrong by the way Beck stopped at the base of his neck to finger his hair, than rubbed the edge of his shirt. Simple movements, but worrisome.

"What's wrong?" Robbie asked, his hands folded neatly in his lap. He furrowed his brow and tilted his head.

These gestures made Beck smile. "Well, okay. It's a long story. Do you think you're prepared? It gets pretty gruesome, you know. Since Jade's involved."

"What-"

"So were all at the Karaoke place with those buffalo nuggets, right? And Jade convinced Sikowitz to buy us all drinks."

"When was this?"

"Saturday, yesterday. We would've invited you, Robbie, but you had to go your grandmother's, remember?"

Robbie nodded.

"Jade got Sikowitz drunk by spiking his drinks with our drinks. I know, Jade's evil. But _you _know that Sikowitz goes into his _peace, love, and drugs for everyone _mood when he's drunk."

Robbie nodded again.

"Cat is very emotional when drunk. Jade is a violent drunk. Cat told Jade she loved her. Jade kind of punched her. In the face."

"Kind of?"

"Well, she loosened her blow when she realized what she was doing. Jade's fond of Cat like that."

"That's not like Jade at all," Robbie muttered. He liked to think that he knew Jade fairly well, because she was his best friend's girlfriend, and he'd known her since they were freshmen. "She doesn't really punch people she loves."

Beck shrugged. "She doesn't like declarations of love. Jade is a violent, sloppy drunk. Me? I'm a talkative drunk. I told Tori I liked her cheekbones. Jade punched me. She didn't hold back, though." Beck pointed to a previously unnoticed bruise on his own (rather nice) cheekbone, smiling fondly as if it was a hickey. "Didn't bother me. Tori was so upset she turned to André for comforts of a more carnal kind."

"I don't understand why everybody's not talking to you," Robbie said. "It sounds like … a _normal _outing to me."

Beck sighed and closed his eyes, placing his hands behind him. "Then I, ah, I did some regrettable things."

"Like what?" Robbie's eyes widened.

"It was just a night full of making out and punching people in their face, I guess," Beck sighed. He kept his eye closed. "Pulled Tori from André kissed Tori punched André." The words came out very fast.

"There was a lot of punching and kissing," Robbie noted.

"We got kicked out and Sikowitz told us we should loosen our views on monogamy." Beck laughed. "Cool guy, Sikowitz."

Robbie said nothing. Really, all he could think about was _you had to go to your grandmother's instead, remember? _It was silly, it was stupid, but he felt as if they hadn't gotten drunk and angry with each other, leaving Robbie to sort it all out, Robbie wouldn't have found out about their excursion. Actually, Robbie was sure of that. That hurt, too. There wasn't even a _we missed you._

"Robbie?" Beck's voice, cool and calm as usual, bought Robbie back down. Beck had opened his eyes.

"Yeah, cool guy, Sikowitz," Robbie said, absentmindedly.

"Yes, of course," Beck said, leaning forward. "But aren't you going to call me a whore and tell me that I deserved what I got?"

"Why would I do that?" Robbie blinked a few times. _Whore _was not really in his vocabulary, and he never thought Beck was a whore, after all. His only serious-his only _ever_-girlfriend was Jade. As far as Robbie knew, Jade was Beck's first _everything_. That isn't very whorish, not at all.

"Because it's true," Beck said, "and you don't lie."

"I would be lying if I told you I thought you _were _a whore."

"I kissed Tori." Beck winced, as if the memory pained him, though that may have been bought on by the fact that he was rubbing his eyes and his knuckles grazed the bruise on his cheekbone.

"You were drunk!" Robbie stood up very suddenly. "If I were drunk, I would kiss somebody that I loved, too! I would do that even if I wasn't drunk!" He didn't know where this was coming from, really. "But I'm not drunk and nobody loves me. Not even my friends."

Beck stood up now. He dusted off the front of his jeans, even though they weren't dirty, and stared at Robbie. "What the fuck? We love you-"

"Were you going to tell me about your night out if you hadn't gotten drunk and _fucked everything up_?"

"It's not like that," Beck said, softly. He seemed sobered by Robbie's use of the word _fuck_, which was a privilege in their friendship usually reserved for Beck. "I didn't want to go. I hate karaoke. Cat likes it, and you know how Cat and Jade are-"

"Don't explain yourself to me," Robbie spat. And with these words, he turned on his heels, ignoring the _Robbie, stop!_'s, _Stop being such a little bitch!_'s, the singular _I didn't even tell you the whole story, _and _Come on, Robbie, come back_'s Beck threw his way.

He was halfway home when he remembered that his favorite cardigan was still at the park. He began to cry, very thankful that Rex was not there to comment on his girly tears.


	3. the color of the ocean

**A/N: **I _will _finish this story. I _will not_ abandon it after two or three chapters. This is mainly continuing to set up the subplot, though lo and behold, main plot is introduced. I did nothing with the "write for ten minutes" part, and included dialogue as the main storytelling technique for this chapter. Robbie still angsts, though. What type of story of mine would it be without Robbie angsting? Anyway, enjoy. Expect chapter four out sometime within the next few months. It will probably be around chapter two's length, though I am trying to slowly increase the length of each chapter.

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><p>chapter three<em><br>_

_write for ten minutes. dialogue. the color of the ocean._

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><p>When he arrived home, he realized he'd only been gone for not even an hour. He had also developed a wretched headache. He rubbed his eyes and stumbled blindly into his house, avoiding the bright lights of the kitchen that he had, apparently, left on. He and Rex were home alone.<p>

He didn't really want to do anything, so he swallowed two painkillers with a spoonful of mayonnaise and laid down in bed, lights off, fan on and air conditioner lowered to just 70. He wore nothing but boxers and felt a nice chill, knowing that he would soon be warm underneath his blankets.

Rex woke up.

"Hey, loser," he said, voice groggy from sleep. "Dress me, why don't you?"

"I can't," Robbie muttered. "I have a headache."

"Haven't been drinking, have you? I know you wouldn't take shots without your old buddy Rex."

"No. Of course not. I had a fight with Beck."

"About what?"

"He went out yesterday and had a lot of fun without me. Everybody was there. Cat, Tori…"

"Of course they didn't invite you. You're no fun."

Robbie sighed. The damp washcloth over his eyes shifted slightly. "I know."

(...)

In the morning, nobody was home. Of course, this didn't shock Robbie. His parents left early and came home late. His sister was away on a fieldtrip wasn't due back until Wednesday, at least.

Robbie slid out of bed and found that he was shivering, throat aching lightly. Now is not the time to get sick, he told himself. You just feel this way because you slept in the cold last night. He maneuvered through the house, flicking on lights and turning up the thermostat. He still had his blankets wrapped around his shoulders.

He considered very briefly taking the day off of school, excusing himself as sick, but the ache in his throat was already lifting. Spirits dampened, he prepared himself an entirely gluten-free breakfast, eating alone in his large dining room. The blankets were still around his shoulders, his hair mussed, and he had not yet brushed his teeth.

When he went back into his room to get dressed, he found his phone beeping on his bedside table. Four call from Tori and three texts.

_call me when you see this ! smiley face !_

_I really need to talk to somebody!_

_jade's so mean!_

He did not respond to any of them, leaving the phone by the table and looking through his closet. The closet bought back the cardigan, which in turn bought back the fight with Beck, which had Robbie on his knees in no time flat. He clutched a pair of jeans to his chest and gracefully rocked forward. Rex told him he was weak.

It was just a couple of seconds before he straightened himself up and pulled on the jeans but that was still enough time to remind himself that he was pathetic. He wrapped a belt through his belt loops and went, shirtless and shoeless, over to dress Rex. He had long since given up dressing them identically; people had begun to tell him it was creepy. Today, he put Rex in his usual pair of jeans, shirts, and a nice flannel shirt. He ignored Rex's "What do you think I am, a doll? Weren't you going to ask me what _I _wanted to wear for once?" and shifted through his drawers, looking for a shirt. Eventually he found a suitable one and pulled it over his head.

Lastly, he tugged on his shoes, tied the laces, and remembered Tori's texts. He decided to call her while he packed his backpack for the day.

She picked up on the second ring. "Robbie! I have _so much _to tell you. Did you know-" and he listened to her ramble through the same story that Beck had told him while he sorted his binders and put new paper in his History folder. She had more details than Beck's simplistic, by-the-facts explanation had. For example, Cat had followed Jade everywhere, and Beck's lips tasted-unsurprisingly-like lemonade.

"Not like lemonade, really," she was saying, "but like lemon-flavored lip-gloss. Beck's lips are too chapped, he's such a typical boy…I bet Jade wears it for him, but Jade mostly wears lipstick, right? Maybe it was just lemonade after all. So then André…"

He was sitting on his bed with his backpack in his lap and Rex still on his dresser when Tori finally finished. She sounded exhausted. "André had to go to the _hospital._"

"Like that time that Cat hit you? You know, when we were sick with the Pooka fish poisoning-" and while Tori was saying, "Yeah, like that, except that André's nose is broken, that's _serious_-" Robbie suddenly remembered, very violently and fiercely, Trina and her coffee and her smile.

"Tori, has Trina said anything about me, lately?" Robbie asked, cutting her off. He tried to sound casual, but there was a nervousness in his voice, a sort of anticipation.

"What? No, while would she? Robbie, don't tell me you like her again. She's not worth that, really!" Tori squawked on the other end of the line.

"Oh, no," Robbie mumbled, trying to sound suave and coming off more awkward. "I just-she came into the place that I work and I made her coffee. I wanted to know if she liked it."

He knew that if Rex wasn't mad at him for not asking his opinion, he would've said something along the lines of _nice save, _though not with a comforting tone.

"Oh, well, I don't know. I like your coffee! But, anyway, so André's bill was like really high so I told him to get Beck to pay it for him, but André didn't say anything back. He just kind of went away and I had to call Trina for a ride home."

This was a very unsatisfactory conversation, for several reasons. Though Tori definitely painted a very different picture of that night than Beck had-Beck's sounded more cool and relaxed, while Tori's conveyed hectic drama-it still reminded him that he could've been in that mess somewhere. That maybe he could've been the one who punched André in the face, or confessed his love to someone, although he didn't have anybody to confess too.

"Wait," Robbie said, as if he had just been struck by a great idea, "what did André do?"

"He told me we were friends and that he didn't want a relationship in his life right now. Because of his _music,_" Tori sighed. "He can make out with his piano for all I care."

"Um, Tori, I gotta go-" Robbie said, and she hung up before he even finished his sentence. He got the feeling that she was mad at him, but if he didn't leave within the next five minutes, he would've been late for school.

He slung his backpack over his shoulder and grabbed Rex. He ran down the stairs, through the kitchen, grabbed the keys by the door, and slammed the door shut behind him. He hastily turned the key to lock it before rushing to his car, slamming _that _door, and buckling himself and Rex in. He threw his backpack into his backseat and then he was off.

Robbie drove carefully, the radio on low and turned to a station that played only soft, gentle music, that Robbie did not feel a compelling urge to sing along with. Turns and stops, red lights and pedestrians. The route to school was painstakingly familiar and did not take as long as usual today. Once there, he pulled into his spot, turned the car off, and gathered his things. Rex was placed firmly on Robbie's arms, his backpack around his shoulder, and next thing he knew he was in the hallway of Hollywood Arts, surrounded by students.

He was just to his locker, ready to grab things he hadn't needed over the weekend, when Cat appeared by his shoulders. She was particularly short today, and he noticed she was wearing flats, her hair pulled up into a hastily-made ponytail. She had not bothered to straighten it today. Red curls fell down her back. She looked very pretty in a disheveled kind of way.

"Robbie!" She shrieked, grabbing his elbow. "Have you heard?" And she proceeded to tell him everything that he had heard before. Her version painted Jade almost saint like, as if punching Beck was completely right-"I wouldn't like it if _my _boyfriend kissed Tori…again…"- and she did not bother to mention the fact that she had been hit in the face, simply saying, "then Jade acted all weird.." instead.

"I have heard, in fact," he said, closing his locker door (he had been exchanging binders and whatnot while she told him her version of the story.)

"Well…" she said, grabbing his elbow again. She bit her lip and looked at him with her wide eyes. Cat had the best puppy dog face out of anybody he knew, ever. "Are you going to help me?"

"Help you do what?" Robbie asked.

"Make Jade loved me…?" And with this, Cat looked downward to the floor.

Robbie sighed. Luckily, he was spared this task by the convenience of the bell ringing. Cat and Robbie did not have the same first period-he had math, while she had her make-up class. They went their separate ways and Robbie slid into his desk, surrounded by people that were not his friends. The only familiar face was Sinjin and his group of strange people, but they were a different kind of strange than Robbie.

Math was easy enough, even if the formulas made Robbie nervous, and they were doing a recap day. He found himself mentally wandering from the classroom.

He had always known Cat to be above and beyond sexuality, if one could say that. When Cat fell in love, she fell in love. Though as long as Robbie had known her, Cat mostly fell in love with boys. He knew there was something in their friendship that most girls-most _people_-did not have, Cat and Jade's underlying bonds, but Robbie didn't really care. He had given up on Cat(and Jade) a long, long time ago.

(...)

At lunch he found himself eating with André. Beck was not speaking to him, Cat was nowhere to be found, Tori was reportedly sobbing in the girls' bathroom, Jade was out of town, and Trina was supposedly comforting Tori in the bathroom. So, Robbie sat across from André, Rex next to him, a salad in front of him, and watched as André doused everything he ate in ketchup. Including his mashed potatoes, which was making Robbie feel slightly ill as he gazed at the colors of his salad. He picked out all of the tomatoes.

"I just don't have time, man," André said, lifting a forkful of chicken-and-ketchup to his mouth. "That record company wants me to write a song for this up-and-coming artist. I barely have time to do my homework now, I can't have a _girlfriend_."

Robbie sighed and gestured to where André was now pouring ketchup on top of a chocolate-chip cookie. "You only do that when you're upset," Robbie noted.

"At least ketchup tastes good, unlike that Mayonnaise you keep in your drawer-" Robbie clapped a hand over Rex's mouth, and the puppet struggled to get his now-muffled words out. (André shot an amused look when Robbie exclaimed, "Ouch! You bit me!" and pulled his hand away from Rex's mouth, leaving Rex to leave a single word hanging, _upset._)

"I don't like seeing my friends fight," Andre said by way of explanation, and took a large bite of his ketchup cookie.

(...)

Robbie drove out to the beach that night. He didn't have any homework for once, and his parents were both gone again. That part didn't bother him-he'd gone a week and a half before he caught a glimpse of his mother in a business suit with a doughnut hanging out of mouth, rushing to get out the door. His father only had Saturdays off, and even then, sometimes he would choose to go in to work instead of stay home.

He wore very old jeans and no shirt, driving and walking barefoot. The temperature was decent. He was neither cold nor hot. He sighed as he sat down just outside the slightly darker line in the sand that indicated where the tide would rise to; he stuck his feet just beyond that line.

He wrapped his arms around his knees. This was not a foreign practice, late night drives out to the beach. There were still some people on it, mostly couples who decided that Monday wouldn't be that crowded of a day, some retired elders walking hand-in-hand. Robbie felt very alone and very small, but that wasn't anything new.

He thought about how Rex hated the beach. Rex told him the water was dirty and that, unlike the movies, there really weren't that many chicks in bikinis playing volleyball. Rex told him it was a waste of his time to sit on the sand for a few hours and just _be,_ just _exist, _that he could be doing something productive with his time. Robbie told him that all Robbie really did w as just exist and there wasn't a difference.

He rested his chin on his knees and looked out at the water. _Shockingly_, it was a very dark shade of blue. What looked inviting by daytime looked downright dangerous at night. He closed his eyes.

He sat there for quite some time, until he heard somebody sitting beside him. He opened his eyes, thoroughly confused, and started to sputter profusely when he saw familiar brown hair falling around a familiar tan face with those familiar brown eyes, wearing a familiar pink shirtdress. The figure mimicked his position, knees drawn to its chest, arms around its knees, chin on its knees, head turned towards Robbie.

"Hey," Trina said.


End file.
